There are two scandals that are, unfortunately, currently rocking the Italian-wine industry.
1) Contaminated cheap wine…
70 million litres of cheap Italian wines (sold for under 2 euros per litre) were discovered to be contaminated with traces of horse manure, acid, fertiliser, hydrochloric acid and lots of water. The bootleg production has been placed firmly on the shoulders of the Italian Mafia.
(In a similar case back in the 80s, it was alleged that at least 22 people had died from drinking tainted wine and 90 people had been hospitalised).
2) Less-than-authentic Brunello di Montalcino…
Some wine producers (some of them quite big on the market) are apparently adding more than the legally required 100% Sangiovese grapes to their Brunello di Montalcino.
Brunello cannot be sold until about 4 years from the time its grapes have been harvested. Out of that, a minimum of 2 years (in oak) and 4 months (in a bottle) must be spent aging it. However, some of these winemakers have apparently been adding one or two other grape varieties in order to speed up the aging process and therefore send it to market quicker.
People pay good money for the authenticity of Brunello, and this scandal, whether proven to be true or not, is bound to cause the Italian-wine industry some harm. I really don’t think they’ll come out of this completely unscathed. Doubts will have been planted regardless of innocence or guilt. To some extent, it will be down to what people believe and some people will inevitably believe it to be true.
Meanwhile, you might get some Italian-wine producers who’ll be rather reluctant to defend the Brunello producers in question – preferring to distance themselves as far as possible from the scandal for fear of tainting their own reputation (and therefore sales).
It’s yet to be seen how the industry will recover from this. I hope it will. It has to.
(img by: Greencolander)